


As I Lay Dying

by isitandwonder



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Drinking, Elio isn't in a good place, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Sad, this is just sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isitandwonder/pseuds/isitandwonder
Summary: 20 years on, Elio is out clubbing after Michel has left him. He's thinking about life and makes some bad decisions before he decides that maybe he should give it one more try...
Comments: 28
Kudos: 33





	As I Lay Dying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leili](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leili/gifts).



> Sorry, I still haven't read Find Me, so my timeline might be all wrong.
> 
> Anyway, my friend Leili asked for a rather sad fic involving Elio being wasted and imagining meeting Oliver... and I was in a mood.
> 
> I know this needs a second chapter. We'll see...

20 years on, Elio is out clubbing after Michel has left him. He's thinking about life and makes some bad decisions before he decides that maybe he should give it one more try...

It was three o'clock in the morning and Elio was positively hammered.

He'd been at the club since about eleven after a bar crawl that had involved some rather pathetic attempts of older guys to pick him up.

As if...

As if he'd ever fall for an older guy again!

As if Oliver hadn't been bad enough... and now Michel... did he ever learn from his mistakes?

Oh, but he would change. Now he would change. It might have taken him almost 20 years but now he had finally figured it out. He had figured it all out...

And another shot would help him see even clearer.

He had trouble getting his order across to the bartender but that was surely because the music was so fucking loud.

Elio liked it. It prevented him from thinking too much.

He knocked back the Vodka in one go, slamming the empty glass down onto the counter. When the bartender looked over at him he signaled for another.

The man said something. Elio leaned over.

“...enough.”

“What?”

“You had enough.”

Fuck him, who did this guy think he was? Elio's dad?

Elio started giggling. His dad had died last year. He was beyond his reproach now.

And the bartender should just do his job and tend the fucking bar!

Yet as Elio tried to get that point across his tongue wouldn't follow his thoughts.

Shit!

Instead of another drink the bartender put a small bottle of water in front of Elio.

As he eyed it with contempt it became two bottles.

Then the two bottles started moving.

Elio decided it was time to take a piss.

As he staggered down the corridor to where he hoped the toilets were located he wondered why the floor was swaying. In the end he reached out for the wall to steady himself. After a few deep breaths he stumbled on.

Relieving himself turned out to be a complicated matter. His hands fumbled with his fly but seemed unable to open it. When he finally unzipped he had trouble hitting the pissoir.

He'd never been good with hard liquor, he thought, as he remembered the last night with Oliver in Rome. Instead of being the most romantic event in their too short affair Elio had puked all over himself.

But Oliver had kissed him anyway.

The kiss of a lifetime...

Oliver...

Why was he so maudlin tonight? He hadn't thought about Oliver in ages. Because he'd had Michel to take his mind off him...

Well, not anymore.

And it was all his fault. His inaptness to compromise (only-child syndrome Michel had called it. He'd loved diagnosing Elio), his unwillingness to commit, his rather fluid views when it came to monogamy... it all had driven Michel away in the end.

Yet he had lasted surprisingly long. Hope dies last, Elio suspected, but in the end, it died. Like everything.

So what had Elio expected? In the end, he drove them all away.

The only men hanging on to him seemed to be those he didn't care about. The ones he just used for his own pleasure.

And he'd called those old geezers pathetic who'd wanted to buy him a drink earlier, to lubricate the way into his pants.

Well, takes one to know one...

Not young anymore but not old either, yet way too immature for his age, Elio kept playing the game. Because it was just a game, wasn't it? A game in which everyone lost and only the house made a decent win.

The house... the villa... Oliver.

Fuck, why was he always coming back to Oliver? Six weeks they'd know each other, had been lovers for barely two of them. True, Oliver had taken his virginity, but that was just an old-fashioned social construct that really shouldn't mean anything...

The first cock up your ass shouldn't be a life-changing moment that you still dreamed about twenty years later...

But no matter how many other dicks Elio had allowed to fuck him, somehow they'd never been able to come close to his first. The pain, the shame, mixed with the heady realization that this what it, was what he'd always yearned for and wanted, in all its base dirtiness beyond which uncharted pleasures lay was still so vividly ingrained in his mind as if it had happened yesterday...

Only, in real life. yesterday Michel had packed three boxes and a suitcase before dropping his keys into the bowl on the sideboard next to the door.

He didn't even say good-bye, just closed the door carefully.

In that moment, Elio had hated him more than he'd ever loved him.

Because Michel had been careful, tender, understanding – but he'd never understood what Elio truly needed.

Well, even Elio wasn't sure what he truly needed. But sure as hell he didn't need Michel, soft-spoken, gentle, kind Michel.

Had Oliver been kind, gentle? Elio couldn't remember. He could barely remember Oliver's face... his voice he had lost many years ago. His smell even before that.

Somewhere in the boxes in the basement he still kept Oliver's shirt. Had it been gray or blue...? Elio wasn't sure anymore.

How might Oliver look today, Elio wondered sometimes when his brain refused to piece together the few fragments of his face he remembered. The blue eyes, the blond hair...

Was he fat and bald by now? Or wiry thin because he ran marathons? Did he grow a beard? 

Did his sons know he'd fucked a boy their age twenty years ago in Italy – and that boy never recovered?

Was Oliver even still alive? (Well, he had written when his father had died, a short, formal letter expressing his sympathy in the most generic way. Next to his name someone else had written 'and Irene'. His wife, presumably. Elio had thrown the letter away, not even bothering to read it to his mum.)

But that had been a year ago. Lots of things could happen in a year.

Sometimes it only needed six weeks to fuck your whole life over.

Elio had often wondered how his life would have turned out if he'd gone to visit his aunt in Canada that year instead of traveling with his parents to Italy.

Maybe he would be happy now? Maybe he would have a wife and kids like Oliver?

Fuck, he needed another drink.

And then he saw him... tall, blond, broad shoulders to which a light-blue shirt was clinging...

Could this be possible? Had wishful thinking summoned a ghost from the past? Or was Elio just so plastered that by now every guy looked like HIM?

The illusion ended abruptly when the man turned around. The nose was all wrong, as were the eyes that met Elio's.

“Sorry?” The man yelled over the music.

“I thought... I thought I knew you... once.” Elio stammered. Thank god the alcohol gave him courage.

The man smiled. “Is that so?” He let his gaze roam Elio's body. “Was I any good?”

Perfect, it was perfect, Elio thought. Oliver was perfect. But aloud he said: “It wasn't bad.”

_'I loved it, Oliver. I loved you.'_

_'But you're gone and will never come back to me. Ever.'_

_'So I just fuck everyone else instead while you lie next to your wife.'_

_'Do you sometimes dream of me? Of us?'_

“That's good to know.” The man grinned. “Shall we go somewhere else? It's too loud here...”

Elio was already walking towards the exit, nearly forgetting to get his coat back from the coat check.

Outside, the air was chilly. Elio's ears rang from the loud music in the club. But the fresh air helped him clear his foggy mind a little.

He didn't like it.

“Let's get another drink somewhere.” He didn't wait for the man as he staggered down the street in search of the nearest bar.

The next hour was a blur. They got a drink or two somewhere. Then there was a taxi ride. An arm around his waist. A hotel room.

A bed.

Some fumbling.

Hands all over his body.

A wet mouth against his.

“Sorry, I have to-”

Too late.

This guy wasn't Oliver.

“Jesus, fuck! Shit! Are you fucking mental? Throwing up all over my bed...”

Elio wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he tried to climb off the mattress. The room smelled of sour vomit and it took him a moment to realize that it was his.

The duvet was sprinkled with dark-red stains. As was the guy's light-blue shirt, the puke turning violet on the fabric. Purple haze. Campari could do that.

Elio giggled. The man yelled at him. Elio only laughed more.

Until a fist hit his face and he stumbled backwards. The shock and throbbing pain made him rather sober all of a sudden. Too sober.

He realized that he was stuck with this guy. The door was locked. And the man kept yelling. And punching him. Kicking him as he lay on the floor...

Elio tasted blood. Was it dripping from his nose, like on that day he had a nosebleed after Oliver had played footsie with him under the dining table?

Yes, it was true, Oliver had hurt him. But never like this.

Elio had no idea how he got away but suddenly he was running down the hotel corridor, not bothering to wait for the lift as he ran down a flight of stairs, his steps echoing from the bare walls until he was outside, in a back alley.

The lights of the Eiffel Tower were visible when he looked up at the dark sky.

Where the fuck was his coat? His phone was in his coat.

Elio stumbled on, through empty yet brightly lit streets, a vague sense of orientation guiding him towards the river.

His ribs hurt. His head was pounding. He had trouble breathing. His mouth tasted like public toilets smelled.

But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing had ever mattered after that fateful summer twenty years ago.

Why did he only realize that now?

He'd been in a coma ever since.

He wished he had his phone. He suddenly wanted to call his mum. Wished she would remember him, his voice; that she had a son called Elio that she used to love.

Maybe it was a good thing that his phone was in his coat and his coat was gone.

Otherwise he might have made a mistake. Called Michel.

Or called Oliver.

He had his number in his phone. He had no idea how that had happened? Did his dad give it to him, or his mum? Maybe Oliver himself when they'd met this one time five years ago in the States after Elio had walked into his lecture?

Maybe he had changed his number by now anyway...

And what would Elio even say?

'You've been the only person I've come close to loving.'

What good would that do?

Elio was dimly aware that he was walking over a bridge. And then he was in a park, with benches and grass and some kind of lake in the middle, and it all looked rather drab but he didn't mind as he sat down on one of the benches, staring at the Eiffel Tower that looked so close that he thought he could touch it.

Wasn't that the story of his life? Things looking so close but when he reached out for them it was all just an illusion.

He only realized he'd started crying when his cold tears fell onto his freezing hands.

They'd never held hands, he and Oliver. It had been too risky back then, at least out in the open. But at night, in his room, their room, Elio had loved to intertwine their fingers, had loved to see the contrast between his slim elegant fingers and Oliver's broad hands. He'd gotten off on that.

He couldn't remember Oliver's touch. Maybe that was the worst. It had been overwritten by so many other hands, fingers, touches. Elio hated himself for having allowed this to happen.

It didn't help him forgetting Oliver.

It didn't make him feel any better.

As the sun started to creep over the horizon, Elio realized he should probably go home. He padded down his trousers. He might have lost his phone but at least he still got his keys. And his wallet.

Home.

He thought about the apartment he'd shared with Michel. Cream-colored walls. White shelves. A huge bed with an ergonomic mattress. A walk-in shower.

Elio suddenly realized that he hated it.

The only thing he'd miss would be the Bechstein. It had a superb sound, rich and warm.

But it was just a piano. A thing. A vehicle to express his feelings. It had always been. He didn't even like playing the piano. He just had to or he would've gone mad.

With a sudden pang he realized that no one would miss him if the guy in the hotel room had smashed his head in.

If he died tonight, he could just vanish forever. Without a trace. The river was right there. He could just jump... and it would all be over. The pain. The emotions. The feeling of not belonging.

He could just climb over the railing. Bend over. Fall.

And then... nothing.

It could end it right here.

He didn't believe in anything anymore. He hadn't ever worn his Star of David after that summer. What good did it do to him? Or to Oliver? It had only made him feel guilty.

He didn't need a god or a religion for that. He managed just fine on his own.

All the guilt he'd carried all these years. For being a bad son. A bad lover. A bad friend. For being not enough. And too much.

The only thing he was good at was playing the piano. Because he put all his guilt and self-hatred into it. The piano didn't judge him. It needed him to produce a sound.

Bach might judge him but then Elio kept him alive. So he couldn't complain much.

Thinking of Bach brought back the memory of a summer's day as he'd tried to seduce Oliver via the piano. And Bach.

He'd been a silly teenager, so eager to please, so eager to make an impression.

Where had that boy gone?

Suddenly, Elio had an idea.

He could drown himself in the Seine tonight – or he could try one last time.

He had his wallet. His credit card. His passport.

That was all he needed.

He could still drown himself in the Hudson. Didn't people jump all the time from Brooklyn Bridge?

But maybe, just maybe, he would live.

He had a few things to say to Oliver before he was ready to leave this world.

He walked over to the broad boulevard, flagging down a taxi.

“À l'aéroport. Aussi vite que tu peux.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, but at least Elio is on his way to the airport to fly to New York.


End file.
